Designing for User Satisfaction:The Scandinavian tradition of participative design

7.3 The Scandinavian tradition of participative design

The provenance for the sociotechnical underpinnings of ETHICS is in the seminal work of the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations in London, which operated from the 1950s onwards. A criticism that can be levelled against a sociotechnical approach such as ETHICS is that it can be used to managerialist ends, as a way of persuading workers to accept changes that might otherwise have been rejected in order that the organization can benefit from the increased efficiency that results from user involvement. The ideas promoted by the Tavistock were also taken up in Scandinavia, but with a stronger emphasis on democracy in the workplace. Ehn (1993) defines democracy as freedom from the constraints of the market economy and the power of capital. The desire to accumulate capital is the driver for changes in work practices – the result is intensification of work and the use of new technology.

Greenbaum (1995) has reviewed the development technology and changes in work in the twentieth century and reaches the conclusion that management objectives have not changed: the aim is to reduce cost and to increase productivity. This drive for efficiency gains can lead to the intensification of work practices, as is the case with an airline reservations call centre:

There's AHU, that's After Hang Up time. It's supposed to be fourteen seconds. It just came down to thirteen. But my average is five seconds  AHU, because I do most of the work while the customer's still on the phone. There's your talk time, your availability, your occupancy – that's the per cent of time you're plugged in, which is supposed to be 98 per cent ....(p. 84) You might think that routinization and intensification of work is restricted to clerical and production line work, and this was largely true up until the 1980s. With the introduction of 'business process redesign' initiatives Greenbaum argues that the intensification of work has spread to managerial grades, who have seen the clericalization of professional work (for example, they do their own word processing and answer the telephone) accompanied by greater productivity demands. The drive for profit and capital accumulation can now be seen to affect all levels of the organization.

The setting in Scandinavia is supportive of workplace democracy. Scandinavian countries tend to have highly educated workforces, strong trade unions, centralized negotiation mechanisms, social democratic parties in government, regulated relations between trade unions and employers, and a positive attitude to technology (Ehn, 1993). Throughout the 1970s and the 1980s participative design projects were initiated in Scandinavian countries. One of these was UTOPIA (Ehn & Kyng, 1987), a collaborative project between the Nordic Graphic Workers' Union and research institutions in Sweden and Denmark to investigate computer support for integrated text and image processing. In projects such as UTOPIA the potential for dehumanization of work was put centre stage as an issue to be addressed when introducing new technology. System developers and researchers worked with a group of typographers to understand how computer technology might be used to enhance the typographers' skills and to improve the typographic quality of the newspaper. These projects focused jointly on the quality of work-life and the quality of the product.

7.3.1 Participative design principles

Following Bodker et al. (1993) we can summarize the participative design approach to computer applications (p. 158):

• Computer applications should enhance workplace skills rather than degrade them;

• Computer applications are tools that should be designed to be under the control of the people who use them. The computer systems should support flexible work practices – not make them more rigid;

• The introduction of computer applications changes the organization of work. The interplay between computers and work needs to be addressed directly in design;

• Computer applications are often implemented to improve productivity, but they can also be used to improve the quality of the product.

7.3.2 The participative design process

To support the design process Bodker et al. (1993) propose a phased structure (figure 7.5) that we will adapt to the Playhouse case study. In the first phase, developers learn about the work at the Playhouse through interviews and user demonstrations of how work is accomplished currently. The future workshop lasts around half a day and is facilitated (preferably by an independent third party) to ensure that all attendees have the opportunity to contribute. It is possible that managers won't be invited to the workshop so that workers can speak freely and without concern about management retaliation. The critique phase is a brain-storming session where current problems and issues are brought out and then categorized. The fantasy phase gives the participants the opportunity to think about 'what if' – how could the work and the workplace be different?

In the organizational game phase current roles and tasks are described and new possibilities explored using mock-ups and prototypes. This phase, for example, could involve a cardboard replica of the box office to allow users to play with the layout of work-stations, customer windows, etc. The mock-up might also be combined with theatre staff playing the role of theatre-goers. The organizational games phase should make a difference to the participants, produce results that are likely to be implemented, and be fun to participate in.

The action plan produced from the organizational games is taken forward into a continued process of cooperative design where the mock-ups and prototypes are developed further and tested by embodying them into new and modified work practices. Trying the prototypes in a true-to-life work situation is an important aspect of participative design; these are not merely userinterface prototypes produced by developers and then tested out of context by workers in laboratory conditions. The exploration and experimentation of cooperative design in the workplace provides the basis for making a detailed plan about the new box office information system and associated work practices.

However, to reinforce a respect for the difficulties of design Ehn & Kyng (1987) recommend:

Designers should restrict their activities to a few domains of application, and they should spend at least a year or two getting acquainted with a new area before doing actual design. (p. 56).

Although organizations might not be in a position to take this advice literally, it is a salutary reminder of the difficulty for IS developers to understand and describe work.